F

777

BANCROFT LIBRARY

By WALTER H. FINK

DIRECTOR OF PUBLICITY, District No. 15, U. M. W. A.

THE HORRORS OF THE SHAMBLES OF LUDLOW

•Louis Tikas and James Fyler, murdered, can be seen lying in the foreground. Fyler is
lying nearest to the gunmen-militia, who are gloating over their work

SECOND EDITION

Copyright, 1914

Price 25 Cents

4 "7

To Officers and Members of Organized Labor :
Dear Sirs and Brothers:

"The Ludlow Massacre," by Walter H. Fink, our
publicity agent, is an authentic and interesting narrative
of the sufferings of Colorado coal miners, their wives and
0$ children.

Mr. Fink has been in active touch with the situation

• since before the strike and with his experience as our

publicity agent, there is none better able to write a story

^ of the struggle. We believe so thoroughly in the ability

of Mr. Fink to write the real story of the strike that we

»J have had him at work for the past eight months compiling

a history of our fight in Colorado since 1876.

"The Ludlow Massacre" is being sold at twenty-five
DT cents, a little more than cost, that every worker in the
0 country may be fully acquainted with the horrors of the
jj Colorado strike and we believe you will find it well worth
^ reading.
t- Thanking you for your enthusiastic support of our

strike, we art

Yours very truly,

JOHN R. LAWSON,
JOHN MCLENNAN,

E. L. DOYLE,
Policy Committee District 15, U. M. W. A.

Introduction

"The Ludlow Massacre " gives the workers of
the country the first complete and authentic story
of the horrors of the Colorado coal miners' strike.
• Sixty-six persons are known to have been killed
and forty-eight wounded in the numerous battles
and disorders since the miners went on strike, Sep-
tember 23, 1913. Classified, eighteen strikers, ten
mine guards, nineteen mine employes, two militia-
men, three non-combatants, two women and twelve
children lost their lives. Twenty had been killed
prior to April 20, the date of the massacre at Lud-
low, and forty-six were killed during the next ten
days, until federal troops stopped the warfare.

The cost of the eight months' industrial conflict
is estimated at $15,000,000. The figures include
$700,000, representing the state's expense in main-
taining state troops in the field until the arrival of
the federal forces; an estimated cost of $6,925,000
to the union, and a loss of " several millions" claimed
by the operators.

It seems impossible that here in supposedly
free America, men, women and children must be
slaughtered, mothers with babes in their arms must
be ridden down and maimed by a man like Adjutant
General Chase, a pliant lickspittle of the operators ;
that the motherhood of the nation must submit to
robbery, abuse and fiendish outrages; that men and
women must forego their right of trial by jury and
other injustices that they may force the capitalist-
owned state and county executives to enforce the
laws and re-establish constitutional government.
But the fact remains that the Colorado miners have
suffered all of these things that they might secure
an enforcement of state laws.

WALTER H. FINK.

MOTHER JONES

82-Year-Old Angel of the Coal Camps, who was denied her constitutional
rights in Colorado and imprisoned, incommunicado, in a vermin-ridden,
rat-infested cell.

it

The Ludlow Massacre

It was Sunday afternoon.

The Greek members of the Ludlow tent colony
were celebrating their Easter.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had just preached the
word of God to his Sunday school class in New York
City.

The strikers and their families were enjoying
themselves at a baseball game. They were a happy,
care-free audience of twenty-one nationalities, think-
ing of nothing but the freedom from industrial and
political slavery that they were willingly purchas-
ing by an incessant war with the elements, with the
imported assassins of John D. Rockefeller, with the
corporation-owned state and county officials of Colo-
rado.

It had been a day of joy, a day such as victory
in the strike will bring them every twenty-four hours
of the future.

The baseball game was almost over when down
out of the hills, where these strikers had lived in
hovels like hogs, had been robbed of their coal, had
been deprived of their political, industrial and reli-
gious liberty, had been driven into unsafe mines to
be slaughtered, came the gunmen of industry, the
hired murderers of Sunday school teacher and "phil-
anthropist" John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

There were five of these gunmen on horseback
and armed with high-power rifled. They came to
break up the baseball game. But they realized that
even high-powered rifles and machine guns trained
on the baseball diamond from the hills might not be
able to combat the crowd of fans, and they started
away chagrined.

Some of the strikers' wives and children
laughed at these imported assassins who were too
cowardly to carry out their purpose.

"Oh, that's all right ; have your fun today; we'll

8 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

have our roast tomorrow, " said one of the gunmen,
and they rode away.

Little did these peaceful men, women and chil-
dren realize the horrible prophecy this thug was
making.

They were accustomed to the intimidation of
these gunmen. They knew that these derelicts were
hired to murder them, but not for a moment did
they imagine that "our roast tomorrow, " as threat-
ened by the gunmen, was to ]be their cremation.

They did not know that the gunmen militiamen
had trained six machine guns on the Ludlow tent
colony the night before. They did not know that
these same murderers of the State of Colorado and
John D. Rockefeller had completely surrounded the
camp. They did not know that their massacre was
only a question of when three bombs should be ex-
ploded at the headquarters of Major Hamrock.

April 20th dawned a typical morning for the
strikers. Men were busy with their chores. Here
and there throughout the tent colony could be heard
the merry little song of the washboard. Children
darted here and there out of the tents, happy, play-
ful 300 tots, not knowing that before the sun had
set they were to go through the most terrible holo-
caust in the history of industrial struggles. In the
rear of Snodgrass ' store men and boys were playing
baseball.

Since last September these people had been
taught nothing but peace. Their leaders had told
them day after day that they could never hope to
make the disinterested citizen understand their side
of the controversy unless they strictly obeyed every
law and "attended to their own business."

Men in every walk of life who have investigated
the strike or spent any time in the district have
talked of the almost ultra-conservatism of the union
officials. The men and women and children of the
tent colonies had absorbed this feeling of obeyance

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 9

to the laws. They had patiently suffered the intimi-
dation and tortures of the gunmen and militiamen.

It was 9 :55 o 'clock that morning when the strik-
ers and their wives and children were thrown into
a panic of fear by the explosion of a bomb at the
tent of Major Hamrock. It was the signal to the
gunmen miltiamen, surrounding the camp on all
sides, that it was time to start the massacre of the
innpcents of Ludlow and destroy the tent colony.

There were not more than forty rifles in the
tent colony. The men owning these scattered to
the hills in a vain effort to draw the fire of the at-
tacking party and save their loved ones.

At 10 o'clock a second bomb was exploded. Ten
seconds later the third shot was fired and the slaugh-
ter of Ludlow began.

Massacre of the Innocents.

None will know the agonies of that day.

From surrounding hills poured a criss-cross
rain of bullets from machine guns and high-powered
rifles.

Tents were riddled with bullets until they looked
like so many fishing nets.

Using the machine guns like garden hose, the
gunmen cut down everything that rose in their path
of death as they swerved from one end of the colony
to the other and back again.

Women, driven almost insane, ran like fright-
ened hares into caves dug for their safety, their
babes clutching frantically at their breasts, their
older children tearing at their skirts, while around
them fell the explosive bullets of the gunmen-
militiamen.

Quarter was given none by these assassins.
They had been hired at $3 to $7 a day to do this
dastardly work of exterminating the strikers, and
they were determined to do it well.

Into caves, cellars, wells, deserted buildings and

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 11

across the open prairie fled frantic mothers and
children.

One well near the tent colony was packed with
a hysterical, seething mass that might at any minute
be slaughtered.

Out of one of these safety retreats ran little
Frankie Snyder, 11 years old, to get a drink of
water for his mother and little sisters, who had be-
come ill from fright. He was shot through the head
and killed instantly.

Throughout the day Louis Tikas, leader of the
Greeks, braved the hail of explosive bullets, going
here and there through the tents, rescuing women
and children and taking them to places of safety.

Tikas finally saw that it was impossible to save
all of the women and children unless the firing
stopped. He called Major Hamrock, saloonkeeper
in charge of Colorado's uniformed murderers, and
arranged for a meeting.

Tikas a Murdered Hero.

Tikas never returned from that conference.

He was taken prisoner. Some of the gunmen
wanted to hang this refined, law-abiding Greek. B,ut
before they could carry out their purpose, Linderfelt,
more bloodthirsty, hit Tikas on the head, crushing
his skull and killing him instantly. Linderfelt has
admitted that he hit Tikas, breaking the stock of his
gun on the Greek's head.

While the Greek lay on the ground dead, an-
other cut-throat kicked him in the face. And then,
to cover up this terrible murder, they shot him in
the back, giving out the story that he was killed
when he tried to escape. One of the bullets ex-
ploded in his stomach, the jacket lodging under the
skin and the bullet tearing its way through his ab-
domen.

James Fyler, secretary of the Ludlow union,
was another striker who was murdered while a pris-
oner of the Hamrock-Linderfelt " militiamen. "

12 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

Fyler was one of the real heroes of that day.
With his life in danger every minute, he remained
at the telephone, giving the world the only news of
the horror. He was shot with an explosive bullet,
which blew out the front of his face. When his body
was found, $300 which he had in his pocket that
morning was missing.

Another of the heroes was Charles Costa. When
the gunmen militia started their murderous assault,
he, with others in the tent colony who had guns, ran
to the hills to do all he could to save the women and
children and their homes.

Costa was one of the five men of Ludlow colony
to pay the penalty of death for fighting for his con-
stitutional rights, thus defying the rule of anarchy
established by Governor Ammons, Adjutant General
John Chase and others of the operators ' tools who
hold office in Colorado.

Costa was shot through the head. As he lay
there, in view of his tented home where women and
children were being murdered and cremated, dying,
he said to his comrades, sing " Union Forever."

Dies Singing Song.

They crowded around him, the bullets stirring
up the dirt about their feet like a windstorm. Costa
joined in the refrain—

" We've whipped them in the North, boys,
We'll whip them in the South,
Shouting— "

And Charles Costa was dead. But the smile on
his lips showed that he was willing to go.

Had his comrades known what was happening
down in the tent colony, they would have given that
smile a two-fold meaning. They would have said
that he was smiling, too, because of the anticipation
of meeting his wife and three little children ID
Heaven, where Bockefeller's millions do not rule,

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 13

where it does not mean death to fight for those things
which belong to you.

For, while Costa was breathing his last, his
wife and three little children were lying dead in the
"Black Hole," their bodies burned almost beyond
recognition by the oil-fed fire started by Rocke-
feller's murderers.

Without food, without water, amid a shower of
bullets that pierced their places of shelter, the women
and children of Ludlow spent that day.

Among them were mothers with babes at their
breasts, women who were to become mothers that
day and the next and the next.

The militia knew there were no men in these re-
treats. They knew there were no arms there to re-
turn their fusillade of bullets. They knew that in
those places there were only women and children,
but they were the wives and daughters of "those
d — red-necks." In the eyes of the gunmen militia
that removed all questions of sex. It was sufficient
reason to slaughter them if they could.

Refugees peering from their caves, wondering
whether this hail of lead would never cease, were
paralyzed with fear about 7 o'clock that evening
when they saw a militiaman crawl up to a tent on
the outskirts of the tent colony and set it afire with
a blazing torch.

Slaughtered Babes Cremated.

Like a cyclone, the flames swept over the tented
homes, feeding on the oil of Rockefeller which sat-
urated them and seemingly gloating over the feast
provided by the women and children whom they
burned and roasted and clasped between their jaws
of death until they were an inanimate mass of crisp
flesh and bones.

Here and there the fire refused to spread and
up would spring another assassin with a torch to
set it afire.

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THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 15

In small, ill-ventilated caves, in wells, in de-
serted farm houses, on the open prairie, the women
and children of Ludlow spent that night, mourning
the loss of fathers, brothers, husbands, of new-born
babes, who had come into the world that day only
to be murdered and cremated by the Colorado as-
sassins, and all around them fell the bullets of the
uniformed murderers.

Nothing so wanton has ever been known as the
terrible thirst for blood of these assassins. They
knew that these women and children had no food,
no water. But they continued their firing with the
seeming purpose of driving the famished mothers
and tots into the open for food and water that
they might also shoot them down.

Probably the most heinous feature of this mas-
sacre was the refusal of the militia officers to allow
doctors or Eed Cross nurses to minister to the
wounded.

Physicians who went there under flags of truce
soon after the slaughter began, were driven back
by bullets.

Flags of the Eed Cross Society were shot into
shreds with the same utter disregard as the Amer-
ican flag.

Shot at American Flag.

It is not generally known, but it is a matter of
fact that the Stars and Stripes — the flag of our na-
tion— was fired upon when Linderfelt the Butcher
and his hell-hounds turned loose their machine
guns and rifles upon the unprotected tented city of
Ludlow, wiping it out of existence and killing men,
women and children — mostly the latter.

The unionists had three American flags flying
to the breeze on that bloody Monday.

But this made no difference to the gunmen who
were wearing the state's uniforms.

16 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

Their deadly weapons tore the Stars and Stripes
from their masts, just as if they had been so many
rags.

They were burned when the torch was applied
to the canvas homes.

It is a matter of general knowledge that the
men under Chase, when they were sent into the field,
never raised the American flag until they were in
Ludlow several months.

Tuesday morning several undertakers went
from Trinidad to the scene of the catastrophe, but
were driven back by explosive bullets.

Eailroad men and passengers appealed fran-
tically to state officials to do something for the
men, women and children who were lying along the
railroad tracks dead and wounded.

For two days the bodies of Tikas and Fyler
lay exposed. But no appeal would force the state
officers to take care of the dead and wounded.

The fact that none of the bodies reported by
railroad men could be found Wednesday, as well as
the testimony of Mrs. Pearl Jolly, sometimes called
the lt heroine of Ludlow/' explains this action.

Mrs. Jolly, with other women and children,
escaped to a farm house late Monday afternoon.
The next day, when the gunmen were looting the
ruins of the tent colony, she says she saw them
gathering bodies and plaoing them in a huge pile.

Dead Burned in Oil.

When they had completed their search, she
says they poured oil on them and then burned the
bodies. There are more than fifty women and chil-
dren missing and it is believed that all traces of their
murder were obliterated by the militia on the huge
funeral pyre.

Mrs. Jolly during the battle went here and
there through the tent colony, rescuing women and
children, and aiding the sick and wounded. Although

THE LUDLOW MASSACKE 17

she wore a Bed Cross insignia on her arm, the uni-
formed gunmen tried to kill- her, one bullet tearing
off the heel of her shoe.

John R. Lawson, National Board member of
the mine workers, went to Ludlow Monday and
Tuesday to save the women and children, and the
militia riddled his flag of truce and drove him back.

William Snyder was coming from the tent col-
ony Tuesday morning with his family, the body of
his dead son on one arm and his baby daughter in
the other, when he was discovered by some of the
gunmen. One of the gunmen pointed a gun at him
and said, "— - you, I have a notion to kill you,
too."

Dave Stuart, a young boy, spent Monday and
Monday night in the cellar of the Snodgrass store.
When he went to the depot to go to Trinidad, he
was lined up with other boys, from ten to twelve
years of age, and told that the gunmen militia were
going to use them for target practice.

Ludlow that morning presented a deep contrast
to the day before.

Where for seven months 1,200 strikers had
lived in peace, had subsisted on as little as possible,
and had been happy in the realization that the dawn
of a new day was at hand, now stood the charred
ruins of their homes.

Where the day before 300 children had romped
and played and had been happy now lay the dis-
torted, roasted bodies of some of them and their
mothers.

Louis Tikas, than whom there was none among
the strikers more beloved, lay battered and dead
along the railroad track, while the day before he
had been visiting each tent, adding cheer to the men
and their wives, trudging along with three or four
children hanging to him, each one of them wanting
him to come and help play their own particular
game.

18 THE LUDLO.W MASSACRE

There lay the ruins of the Ludlow tent colony,
the largest in the history of the world, and none
knew or ever will know how many of its family of
1,200 paid the penalty of fighting for their consti-
tutional rights in corporation-ridden Colorado.

Trinidad men who went to repair the telephone
lines, cut by the murderers that the outside world
might not know of their work of carnage, told one
of the many pitiful stories of the massacre.

Tuesday they started toward Ludlow to repair
the wires. They were going along the road when
they saw a little girl lying at the side of the road-
way.

She was lying there with the side of her head
badly burned. In one hand she clasped a doll while
the other arm was held across her eyes.

Just as the linemen were about to pick up the
little sufferer, one of the brutal, murdering gunmen
of Linderfelt's command stepped up to the lineman
and told him to leave the little girl where she was.

None know what became of the little tot. It is
believed that she contributed to the blaze on the
funeral pyre erected to John D. Kockefeller Jr.,
Sunday school teacher and philanthropist.

Thirty women and children who escaped to the
Powell ranch were held prisoners there until Tues-
day night. They had nothing to eat or drink and
appealed frantically to Trinidad for relief. Appeals
were sent to Major Hamrock "to have mercy, for
God's sake." Acting Governor Fitzgarrald, who
vies with Ammons for the honor of being the real
spineless executive of Colorado, finally ordered
Saloonkeeper Hamrock to release the women.

Belief automobiles started from Trinidad at
about the same time several wagons left Aguilar
to their assistance. When the wagon approached
the house, Mrs. Pearl Jolly, wearing a Red Cross
insignia on her arm, went to meet it. She was shot
in the arm made prominent by the Red Cross band.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 19

The women, however, made their escape after a
forty-eight-hour siege.

Mrs. M. H. Thomas was another of the women
who was shot at by the murderers. She, with other
women and children, escaped to a nearby ranch,
where most of them were forced to sleep in filthy
stable stalls to evade the exploding bullets from
machine guns and high-powered rifles. When they
ran for shelter Mrs. Thomas was so close to death
that a bullet clipped out a part of her hair, and
around the feet of her two little children played the
machine gun bullets.

A freight train that came down the track about
noon Tuesday enabled this party of refugees to
escape. Knowing that the train would be between
the gunmen and her people, Mrs. Thomas ran to
the well and told others to try to make their escape.
The entire party got away, but it was only because
of poor marksmanship on the part of the gunmen,
who riddled the air about them with hundreds of
bullets.

Eealizing that they had been betrayed by the
state of Colorado and that they could hope to secure
no protection from its militia, union men sent out
an official call to arms, asking workers of the state
and country to arm themselves and be ready to
march at any minute.

The Call to Arms.

The official call was as follows :

Denver, Colo., April 22, 1914.

Organize the men in your community in com-
panies of volunteers to protect the workers of
Colorado against the murder and cremation of
men, women and children by armed assassins in
the employ of coal corporations, serving under
the guise of state militiamen.

Gather together for defensive purposes all
arms and ammunition legally available. Send
name of leader of your company and actual num-

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 21

ber of men enlisted at once by wire, phone or
mail, to W. T. Hickey, Secretary of State Fed-
eration of Labor.

Hold all companies subject to order.

People having arms to spare for these de-
fensive measures are requested to furnish same
to local companies, and, where no company ex-
ists, send them to the State Federation of Labor.

The state is furnishing us no protection and
we must protect ourselves, our wives and chil-
dren, from these murderous assassins. We seek
no quarrel with the state and we expect to break
no law; we intend to exercise our lawful right
as citizens, to defend our homes and our consti-
tutional rights.

JOHN R. LAWSON, U. M. W. A.

JOHN McLENNAN

E. L. DOYLE

JOHN RAMSAY

W. T. HICKEY, Secy. State Fed. of Lab. -

E. R. HOAGE

T. W. TAYLOR

CLARENCE MOOREHOUSE

ERNEST MILLS, Secy.-Treas. W. F. of M.

Offers of armed assistance came from all over
the country, and the workers responded just as
readily and liberally with contributions to relieve
the suffering men, women and children who had been
made homeless and left without food or clothing
by the terrible massacre.

One of the best descriptions of the Ludlow mas-
sacre was given by Godfrey Irwin, a young elec-
trical engineer, in an interview with a New York
World reporter, which appeared in that paper
May 5. Irwin was employed by the Electrical
Transportation and Railroad Company in Trinidad.
The interview as it appeared in the New York
World follows :

22 THE LUDLOW MASSACKE

"On the day of the Ludlow battle a chum
and myself left the house of the Rev. J. 0. Fer-
ris, the Episcopal minister with whom I boarded
in Trinidad, for a long tramp through the hills.
We walked fourteen miles, intending to take the
Colorado & Southern Eailway back to Trinidad
from Ludlow station.

"We were going down a trail on the moun-
tain side above the tent city at Ludlow when my
chum pulled my sleeve and at the same instant
we heard shooting. The militia were coming out
of Hastings Canyon and firing as they came. We
lay flat behind a rock and after a few minutes I
raised my hat aloft on a stick. Instantly bullets
came in our direction. One penetrated my hat.
The militiamen must have been watching the hill-
side through glasses and thought my old hat be-
trayed the whereabouts of a sharpshooter of the
miners.

Saw Tikas Murdered.

"Then came the killing of Louis Tikas, the
Greek leader of the strikers. We saw the militia-
men parley outside the tent city, and, a few min-
utes later, Tikas came out to meet them. We
watched them talking. Suddenly an officer
raised his rifle, gripping the barrel, and felled
Tikas with the butt.

"Tikas fell face downward. As he lay there
we saw the militiamen fall back. Then they
aimed their rifles and deliberately fired them into
the unconscious man's body. It was the first
murder I had ever seen, for it was a murder and
nothing less. Then the miners ran about in the
tent colony and women and children scuttled for
safety in the pits which afterward trapped them.

"We watched from our rock shelter while
the militia dragged up their machine guns and
poured a murderous fire into the arroyo from a
height by Water Tank Hill above the Ludlow de-
pot. Then came the firing of the tents.

"I «,m positive that by no possible chance
could they have been set ablaze accidentally. The
militiamen were thick about the northwest cor-
ner of the colony where the fire started and we
could see distinctly from our lofty observation

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 23

place what looked like a blazing torch waved in
the midst of militia a few seconds before the
general conflagration swept through the place.
What followed everybody knows.

" Sickened by what we had seen, we took a
freight back into Trinidad. The town buzzed
with indignation. To explain in large part the
sympathies of even the best people in the section
with the miners, it must be said that there is good
evidence that many of the so-called 'militiamen'
are only gunmen and thugs wearing the uniform
to give them a show of authority. They are the
toughest lot I ever saw.

"No one can legally enlist in the Colorado
state militia till he has been a year in the state,
and many of the 'militiamen' admitted to me they
had been drafted in by a Denver detective
agency. Lieutenant Linderfelt boasted that he
was 'going to lick the miners or wipe them off
the earth.' In Trinidad the miners never gave
any trouble. It was not till the militia came into
town that the trouble began."

One of the refugees who arrived in Trinidad
told the following story of the catastrophe:

"Monday morning when the people of Lud-
low and the tent colony first got up they noticed
that the gunmen were riding up and down in
great haste, but thought nothing more of it.
The strikers were sitting around in the same
peaceable manner as usual.

"About 8:40 o'clock four ' gunmen-melish '
were seen to go up to the tent colony. They were
hunting for one of the strikers. Louis Tikas
told them if they would get a sheriff and a war-
rant, all right, but otherwise they couldn't have
the party they were looking for. They went
away, and, about 9 o'clock, gunmen were seen
riding from the direction of Berwind. They rode
to the C. & S. bridge and planted four gatling
guns so they were pointing at the colony from
the south. About 9:10 o'clock there were three
bombs of dynamite fired, then, immediately, open
fire was made upon the tent colony. The shots
rained continuously from that on. Linderfelt
was in the Ludlow depot with twelve other

Above — "Little Pete," successor to Louis Tikas as leader of the Greeks.
Below — Amando Pelizarri, national organizer and leader of the Italians.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 25

'braves,' and shot all day long from the depot
window. There were about 800 'scabs' with their
caps and candles on, directly out of the mine, who
were armed with Winchesters and made battle
upon the tent colony.

Threatened to Kill All.

"About 6 o'clock the door of the store was
battered in, the supplies were confiscated, and
then the store building was set fire to. Prom
that there were four other places within the tent
colony that were set fire. Linderfelt was heard
to remark, "There won't be a God-damned red-
neck left when we get through ; we '11 clean them
all." During the day he was asked how many
were killed. He said, "There are four of my
men killed and three injured; them Greeks are
damn crack shots. I went out with five men and
they shot three of them, one through the neck
and another through the shoulder.'

"Another gunmen leader was asked if there
was anyone left in the tents. He said, 'There
were, four men in there; one of them sneaked
out to get some ammunition and I got him ; then
two little girls came out all dressed in white.'
The other party said, 'You surely didn't shoot at
the little girls?' Gunman said, 'Your God damn
right I did.'

"When No. 2 Colorado & Southern train ar-
rived from the north, they were still firing on
the colony. The tents were all ablaze. At the
time of the first shooting the women and children
had gone into the cellars where they would be
safe.

"As the tents burned, women and children
were seen to run out in the light of the blaze,
and just as fast as they came out they were shot
down. The gatling guns would rain bullets down
on them. There were six machine guns pelting
bullets all the time.

"The screams of the women and children
could be heard at the depot; they cried for
mercy, 'Oh, please don't kill us.' 'Oh, mamma,
what shall we do?' But they were shown no
mercy. As they ran out in the glare of the fire,
bullets were rained on them, and then great yells

26 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

would go up from these depraved gunmen whose
lust for blood even led them to kill women and
babes. Every man who has any honor about him,
every man all over the state and the nation should
raise up in arms against this awful tyranny.

"One can hardly imagine such awfulness,
and yet it happened, and strong men could hardly
control their voice for emotion in talking of the
awful deeds which were done in Ludlow today.
One man said, 'If a little dog had been standing
at Ludlow and witnessed the scene which took
place there he must needs weep for the awful-
ness of it all.' '

John E. Lawson, active head of the strike at
the time of the horror, bitterly denounced the gun-
men militia:

Robbed the Dead.

"The hired assassins who are being paid $3
per day by the C. F. & I. and other companies
for murdering innocent people do not understand
that women and children are* entitled to any re-
spect or protection," said Lawson.

"These beasts in human form have mur-
dered these people by turning rapid-fire machine
guns on the tent colony and with high-power
rifles and explosive bullets, and, last but not
least, they have robbed the dead and plundered
the tents of the colony of everything of value and
set the tent colony afire to obliterate as far as
possible the bullet wounds on the dead and the
tents that were filled with bullet holes.

"I have been informed that some of these
Baldwin gunmen have even used dynamite to de-
stroy the charred remains of innocent women and
children, so that the world will never know the
awful truth of the horrible murders.

"No one can fully realize the extent of this
brutal outrage of shooting into the Ludlow tent
colony in broad daylight and with the full knowl-
edge that the tent colony contained many women
and children and men who believed that they
would be perfectly safe if they remained in their
humble homes.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE '27

"It is unthinkable and unbelievable that
there are fiends in human form that could be
induced to commit these hellish acts. The cold-
blooded murder of Louis Tikas does not come as
a surprise to the people who knew him and his
work, for Linderfelt and others in the Colorado
National Guard said that they would kill him the
first time they got a chance.

"John D. Rockefeller, Jr., may ease his con-
science by attending Sunday school regularly in
New York, but he will never be acquitted of
committing the horrible atrocities that have oc-
curred in a country such as America, and he will
be convicted at the bar of public opinion for his
part in the Colorado murders."

The report of the Women's Peace Association reveals
some of the horrors of Ludlow, and, likewise, what repre-
sentative women of the State of Colorado think of it.
The report of the committee is all the more significant
because of its personnel. None of these women are mem-
bers of organized labor. They are in no way identified
with the movement. The association is made up entirely
of society and professional women.

The report is, in part, as follows :

May 7, 1914.
Hon. Elias M. Ammons, Governor:

Sir : The undersigned committee, appointed by
the Women's Peace Association, and duly commis-
'sioned by you, has returned from Ludlow, and sub-
mits the following report:

Our investigations comprised interviews with
militia officers and men, strike leaders and strikers,
and with the District Attorney and various citizens
of Las Animas County, and we beg to supplement
this report with affidavits herewith attached.

Whatever feeling we may have had that accounts
of the mine war had been exaggerated were soon
dispelled. We declare to you that the half has not

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 29

been told, and insist that any full and true relation
of actual events must expect to suffer by reason of
their very incredibility.

There is little use in recounting the details of
the Ludlow massacre. Suffice it to say that we place
the entire blame for this horror on the imported
assassins who masqueraded as sons of Colorado in
the uniform of the National Guard.

Massacre Deliberately Planned.

There is no question in our minds but that the
attack on the tent colony was planned with care and
executed in cold blood. No sooner was the main
body of the militia withdrawn from the strike dis-
trict than a new company was hastily formed out
of the mine guards, mine employes, itinerant gun-
men and slum sweepings. Known as Troop "A,"
this officerless, un-uniformed detachment, together
with the desperadoes under the command of Linder-
felt in Company "B," formed the attacking force.

The three machine guns were planted in posi-
tion prior to Monday morning. We were unable to
discover that a single gun was fired prior to the
explosion of the three bombs that Major Hamrock
admitted to be his own signal for the battle to begin.
The utter unpreparedness of the strikers for fight-
ing is demonstrated by the fact that many of the
women and children were still in bed, and were com-
pelled to flee for their lives half dressed.

We also found that Major Hamrock tested the
range of his machine guns by firing into the first
line of tents, and that later in the engagement sol-
diers soaked paper in oil and used these torches to
spread the conflagration.

Wholesale looting followed the massacre, and
one of the pictures painted for us by homeless
women was that of the soldiers carrying trunks to
the station, dancing with stolen blankets about their
heads to the music of a stolen accordion, and grab-

30 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

bing here and there in the tents for valuables. In
support of these assertions, we direct your atten-
tion specifically to the affidavits of Mrs. Pedregon,
Mrs. Bertoloti and Mrs. Chavez, whose savings and
household goods were taken, and to that of Mrs. Ed
Tonner, which tells how a soldier lighted a broom
soaked in oil and set fire to the tent in which she
huddled with her five children.

Baby Born as Mother Flees.

Fifty of these hunted women, we beg to state,
were about to become mothers, and one unfortunate
actually gave birth to her baby while trying. to es-
cape the hail of bullets from Hamrock's machine
guns. Many ran eight or ten miles in their mad
terror, and others huddled in wells and holes for
eighteen hours without food.

In many instances we are compelled to disagree
absolutely with your military committee. Their re-
port states that the Greeks ruled the colony, while
we assert that no nationality had a dominant voice
— the twenty-six races living and acting in a spirit
of fraternity remarkable to behold. That Louis
Tikas was the recognized leader of the colony was
not due to the fact of his being a Greek, but to his
ability and the love and confidence he inspired. At
this point, we cannot too strongly condemn the cir-
cumstances of his death. No doubt remains in our
minds that Tikas and Fyler, the two leaders, were
murdered while in the custody of soldiers, and that
the Greek was deliberately clubbed by Lieutenant
Linderfelt while standing helpless and unarmed.
Not in the annals of civilized warfare is there record
of anything more inhuman than the cold-blooded
killing of these two prisoners.

We must also disagree with the military com-
mittee in the matter of the death of Frankie Snyder.
According to the report, the father of the boy told
them that Frankie was killed while facing the ar-

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 31

royo, meaning that the strikers had shot him; also
that the elder Snyder told them that the Greeks
planned the battle in advance, and that they were
to blame for the entire trouble.

Talking face to face with us, and signing an
affidavit, Snyder declared that Frankie had been
shot down by the soldiers while cradling his little
sister in his arms. He also charged the militia with
firing the first shot, insisting that the attack was
unexpected, and his bitterness was extreme in tell-
ing how the militia dashed into the tent where the
dead boy lay and called the weeping mother un-
printable names.

We cannot believe that Snyder ever told the
military committee any such tale as they print, and,
if he did so, it must have been under the same com-
pulsion that induced one striker to dig what he
thought to be his own grave.

Brutal Officers Condemned.

We disagree also with the brutal and contemp-
tuous language in which Messrs. Boughton, Banks
and Van Cise dismiss the strikers as "ignorant, law-
less and savage South European peasants. " This
is the judgment of men who have never known what
it is to work, whose activities are entirely parasitic,
and who have no other standard of comparison than
the rich and the idle.

We declare to you that the Ludlow tent colony,
from what we learned, was a community of decent
people, passionately proud of their little tents, do-
mestic to the last degree, generous and loving in
their dealings with one another, and, altogether,
evincing in every relation of life a brotherhood that
shames many a Christian American.

There is no question in our minds that Colorado
has in them the making of a virile, intelligent citi-
zenship, and it is in this connection that we want to
point out to you how absolutely the state has failed

32 THE LUDLOW MASSACEE

in its duty to these foreigners who have been brought
into our midst for assimilation.

There is no question that the coal companies
have violated every law on the statute books for the
protection of their employes. From the commence-
ment of their residence in this land of the free, these
people from other lands have been made the victims
of unbearable oppressions. Herded like cattle,
cheated on the weight of coal they produced, the vic-
tims of extortion at every turn, and unprotected by
proper safety appliances and improvements, they
were given small conception of the justice that is
the keystone in our national arch. Their sole con-
tact with the spirit of citizenship was during elec-
tions, when they were driven to the polls by super-
intendents and voted like sheep.

Nor when the militia came into the district, at
your command, was the situation bettered in the
slightest degree. We talked with any number of
women who told us that they welcomed the soldiery
at first, feeling that they came to restore peace and
promote justice. But when they saw among the
troops the very mine guards, detectives and gunmen
that had been persecuting them, and when these
men commenced to beat, insult, abuse and arrest
them, their welcome turned to hatred.

Flag Trampled in Dust.

. Even the children are imbibing a spirit of hatred
and bitterness that will be detrimental to their
growth as desirable citizens. We insist that these
foreigners learn to love the flag, yet, when the union
women of Trinidad took $300 of their saved pennies
and bought the Stars and Stripes to fly over a pa-
rade, they were ridden down by the soldiery, and
the national colors trampled in the dust. Women
and children were given sabre scars that they will
carry to the grave; a 16-year-old girl was kicked
in the breast by the commanding officer, and others

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 33

were maimed by having gun butts dropped on their
feet.

We could wish to have pages to recite the tor-
tures and injustices to which the men, women and
children of the strikers were subjected. Many were
arrested without warrant or apparent reason, thrown
into jail and actually forgotten as far as any hearing
was concerned. The following case may be cited as
typical.

Mrs. Mary M. Thomas, a frail little Welsh
woman, and the mother of two little children, was
arrested on the streets of Trinidad, subjected to
abuse and insult, and confined for three weeks in a
vermin-ridden cell. Food was thrown to her as
though she had been a beast. Her letters of appeal
went unanswered, and she was released at last with-
out one word of explanation or apology.

It is hardly necessary to recount the experiences
of "Mother" Jones. Eegardless of what one may
think of her opinions or her utterances, surely hu-
manity must sicken at the imprisonment of this old
woman of 82 in a rat-infested basement, held on no
charge whatever, and denied the right to see friends
or counsel, and all this time guarded by four stal-
wart troopers.

Try as we could, we failed to find that the coal
companies had the slightest conception of their duty
to these aliens for whose presence in the state they
are solely responsible. Out of their vicious insist-
ence upon profits alone, they disregarded the fact
that these people and their children constituted a
problem in citizenship that must be solved if our so-
cial structure is to endure. They have taught hate
and violence, prevented understanding and educa-
tion, all to the result that the people of Colorado
are now confronting a danger that can only be
averted by our utmost justice and wisest statesman-
ship.

We are glad, indeed, to be able to report that

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 35

the real Sons of Colorado in the militia seem to
have played small part in this reign of terror. The
brutalities complained of were inflicted almost en-
tirely by the mine guards and hired thugs rushed
into the militia by the coal companies, many of them
still remaining on the company pay-rolls.

The attitude of these creatures was not the
least repulsive features of our investigation. Many
of those with whom we talked actually viewed the
Ludlow massacre as "fun."

In view of all these things, we beg to make the
following recommendations :

1. That you order an instant investigation of
all happenings connected with the presence of the
militia in the strike district, to the end that a dis-
tinction may be established between rightful exer-
cises of the military power and the crimes of indi-
viduals, turning latter cases over to the civil au-
thorities for prompt prosecution. The eyes of the
world are upon us, and the honor of Colorado de-
mands that the state refuse to bear the odium of
atrocities committed by imported Hessians.

2. That the extra session make no provision
for the payment of the indebtedness incurred by the
militia until the military rolls have been purged of
the Eockefeller gunmen and thugs, and until an
auditing committee has made a report that will per-
mit the people to decide between just obligations
and fraudulent claims. It is the right of Colorado
to have a distinction established between the bona
fide, law-loving members of our national guard and
the desperadoes sneaked into it by the companies.

3. That you withdraw your request for a state
constabulary, as such an organization could not help
becoming a powerful adjunct to the labor-crushing
despotism of the coal companies.

4. That you exercise your police power and
take over the mines for operation by the state, pend-
ing an agreement between the strikers and the oper-

36 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

ators. Had this been done in the first place, Colo-
rado would not now be burdened with debt and un-
merited shame.

5. That you lend your aid to the movement
in favor of a constitutional amendment allowing the
state to develop its own natural resources, so that
we may be freed from the menace of such absentee
landlords as Eockefeller, whose only interest in our
affairs is the money that his overseers may mint
from the sweat of wage-slaves.

It is our opinion, sir, that the time has come
for some enunciation of the great truth that the
rights of society are paramount, and that no indi-
vidual, group, corporation or class shall be per-
mitted to advance its own interests at the expense
of the general welfare. Strikes and lockouts are
alike antagonistic to public peace and prosperity.

The public must stretch out its hand, still all
strife and adjust disputes in the spirit of equal jus-
tice that takes no account of race, circumstances or
creed. The people — third party to every industrial
dispute — must assert their incontrovertible claim
to act as arbiter.

President Wilson expects you "to draw the at-
tention of the Legislature to the imperative neces-
sity of immediate consideration of the whole situa-
tion and secure as prompt action as is possible in
the premises. "

What will you do?

Respectfully submitted,
ALMA V. LAFFERTY,
EVANGELINE HEAETZ,

Committee.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 37

Affidavits of Survivors of the Massacre Tell the
Terrible Story

State of Colorado, I gs AFFIDAVIT

County of Las Ammas j

Tom Eomero, being first duly sworn, upon oath
doth depose and say:

That his name is Tom Eomero ; that on Monday,
April 20th, about 9 a. m., he was playing ball back
of the Snodgrass store at Ludlow with one Frank
Didano; that he heard some explosions and saw
some men and women running from the depot at
Ludlow toward the tent colony; that he saw some
soldiers and guards near the steel bridge and some
more over near the soldiers' camp, working with a
machine gun ; that he and Frank Didanp ran for the
tent colony; that right away machine guns opened
fire on the tent colony, and the people hid in the cel-
lars of the tents to keep from getting killed and
some ran for the arroyo; that affiant ran for the
arroyo and took with him some women and children
whom he persuaded to run the risk of the machine
guns ; that some people got killed running from the
tents to the arroyo and other places ; that the firing
got so hot that no one dared to try to get back to
the tents; several men had tried it and got killed;
they got more machine guns and put them on a hill
so they could shoot down in the arroyo, and affiant
then ran away and came to Trinidad; that affiant
had no gun; that there were not over fifty guns in
the tent colony that affiant knows of, including shot-
guns ; that no shooting was done by anyone from the
tent colony ; that they tried to kill every living thing
with their machine guns.

(Signed) TOM EOMERO.

Subscribed in my presence and sworn to before
me this 23rd day of April, A. D. 1914

My commission expires on the 18th day of July,
A. D. 1915.

(Seal) ANGUS E. McGLASHAN,

Notary Public.

THE "BLACK HOLE" OF LUDLOW

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 39

State of Colorado, ) AFFIDAVIT

County of Las Animas f SS'

John Boga, of lawful age, being first duly sworn,
upon oath doth depose and say:

That his name is John Boga ; that he is a strik-
ing miner; that on Monday, April 20th, he was in
the tent colony ; that the tent colony had many Amer-
ican flags on flagstaffs over the tents, as well as
other flags ; that about 9 o 'clock he heard an explo-
sion that sounded like a cannon or dynamite over
near the soldiers' tent, and affiant ran out of his
tent and immediately the soldiers and guards started
shooting into the tent colony; 'that affiant had no
gun^ and ran for his life into the arroyo and stayed
there until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, when
he saw an automobile on the road being shot at by
a machine gun, and affiant ran out and found it was
John Lawson trying to get to the tent colony, and
rode back with him to Hoehne and then came to
Trinidad; that there was no shooting done by any-
one from the tent colony ground; the few men who
had guns went away to other places, and there was
no excuse to shoot into the tents.

. (Signed) JOHN BOGA.

Subscribed in my presence and sworn to before
me this 23rd day of April, A. D. 1914.

My commission expires on the 18th day of July,
A. D. 1915.

(Seal) ANGUS E. McGLASHAN,

Notary Public.

State of Colorado, t gg AFFIDAVIT

County or Las Animas [

John Oleko, of lawful age, being first duly
sworn, upon oath doth depose and say:

That his name is John Oleko ; that he is a resi-
dent of the Ludlow tent colony ; that he is of Slavish
nationality; that he went to the store at Ludlow,

40 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

which is about 200 yards from the tent colony, on
Monday morning, April 20, A. D. 1914, to buy some
things from the store ; that about 9 o 'clock he came
back to his tent, which is No. 120, and in a moment
or two he heard a big shot over near the soldiers'
camp; he came out of his tent and heard another
big shot; pretty soon shooting from soldiers' camp
and from all over that way started by men shooting
toward the tent colony; affiant got scared and tried
to get some Slavish women and children to leave the
tents and hide in the arroyo or run away; that affi-
ant had no gun and there were very few guns in the
tents; that he did succeed in getting three women
and several children down in the creek, but was all
the time shot at by rifles and machine guns; that
.the soldiers and guards shoot thousands and thou-
sands of shots through the tents ; that men who try
to go get women out of tent get killed; that they
holler for women to come down in the creek, but
they were afraid, and affiant thinks that they would
all have been killed had they tried to cross the open
space from the tents to the arroyo ; if the tents had
not been burned, the women and children who had
hid in the holes under the tents might have been all
right, unless the explosive bullets hit near them;
affiant could not do anything, so he ran away to a
ranch and came to Trinidad, where he has been
since.

(Signed) JOHN OLEKO.

Subscribed in my presence and sworn to before
me this 23rd day of April, A. D. 1914.

My commission expires on the 18th day of July,
A. D. 1915.

(Seal) ANGUS E. McGLASHAN,

Notary Public.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 41

Military Report

A military committee composed of Judge Advo-
cate Boughton of the notorious military court, Cap-
tain W. C. Danks and Captain Philip Van Cise did
not deny in its report that the tent colony had been
fired and looted by the thugs after the massacre of
the innocents. The report says:

" During the rescuing, and afterwards, the
tent colony was invaded by the soldiers and
mine guards for quite a different purpose. By
this time the uniformed guardsmen had been
joined by large numbers of men in civilian at-
tire, part of whom were from Troop "A" and
part of them mine guards, all unknown to the
uniformed soldiers and their officers and all un-
used and unamenable to discipline.

"By this time, the time of the burning of
the tents, the nondescript number of men had
passed out of their officers' control, had ceased
to be an army and had become a mob. Doubt-
less all were seeing red on both sides of the con-
flict.

"We find that the tents were not all of them
destroyed by accidental fire. Men and soldiers
swarmed into the colony and deliberately as-
sisted the conflagration of spreading the fire from
tent to tent.

"Beyond a doubt, it was seen to intention-
ally that the fire should destroy the whole of the
colony. This, too, was accompanied by the usual
loot.

"Men and soldiers seized and took from the
tents whatever appealed to their fancy of the
moment. In this way, clothes, bedding, articles
of jewelry, bicycles, tools and utensils were taken
from the tents and conveyed away.

"So deliberate was this burning and looting
that we find that cans of oil found in the tents
were poured upon them and the tents lit with
matches."

LOUIS TIKAS

Murdered Hero

This photograph of Louis, the Greek, was taken at
the well of the Ludlow tent colony several months be-
fore the disaster. It illustrates the extremes to which the
state militia went to harass the strikers — one of Linder-
felt's murderers fell from his horse when the animal
stumbled over a piece of wire. Linderfelt ordered all the
wire fence around the tent colony cut down. It was
thrown into the only well from which the strikers could
get water. Louis is standing beside the wire and a pole
after they were taken from the well.

THE L u D L o w MASSACRE 43

This committee did not hesitate to fix the blame
and to say that the battle was premeditated and de-
liberately planned.

The report says :

"We find that the remote cause of this, as
of all other battles, lies with the coal operators
who established in an American industrial com-
munity a numerous class of ignorant, lawless and
savage South European peasants. The present
underlying cause was the presence near Ludlow,
in daily contact one with another, of three dis-
cordant elements — strikers, soldiers and mine
guards, all armed and fostering an increasing
deadly hatred which sooner or later was bound
to find some such expression."

But the scenes at Ludlow were none the less
pathetic than those in Trinidad, where several hun-
dred women and children found refuge. Society
women, who had been openly opposed to the miners,
offered their homes to the survivors of the horrible
massacre with the same spirit as the working people
offered to share their two and three rooms.

In the halls of the Trindad Trades and Labor
Assembly most of the refugees were housed. No
pen could picture the scenes of suffering or anguish
portrayed there.

Whole Families Wiped Out.

Over in one corner was Mrs. Mary Petrucci,
driven temporarily insane over the loss of her three
little children.

Not far away sat Piedro Valdez, his short,
stocky frame shaking in agonized grief over the
terrible extermination of his entire family.

Piedro was in El Paso when he heard that the
battle had started. He thought of his brother and
his wife and four children who were in the tent
colony, and left at once for Trinidad. When he
reached there, Tuesday, he found his brother dead

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 45

from an explosive bullet and his wife and four chil-
dren burned and emaciated so terribly that they
could scarcely be recognized.

From every corner of the immense hall came
wails and sobs for loved ones known to be dead
or missing.

It was not until Wednesday, forty-eight hours
after the massacre of the innocents at Ludlow, that
the militia allowed Eed Cross nurses and physicians
to go to the scene of the disaster. Then they were
not allowed to search the ruins.

In one cave alone, the ' ' Black Hole of Ludlow, ' '
were found the emaciated bodies of eleven little
children, none of whom were over seven years of
age, and two of their mothers.

Their faces, drawn taut with pain, showed the
terrible torture they had suffered before death, and
their burned bodies put the lie to the militia's story
that they had been suffocated.

Flames Cheat Bullets.

One of these little tots who had been hiding
in a tent tried to escape when the gunmen militia
set fire to the tent colony Monday night. She was
driven back into the flaming furnace by the assas-
sins' bullets and burned to death.

It is believed that many of the children met
their deaths in the same manner. It would have
been impossible for the thirteen women and children
found in the " Black Hole" to have been burned
there.

Some of those found dead there were not
burned. These were the children who were taken
to this place of safety by Louis Tikas and others
before the colony was destroyed.

The others were probably picked up in the
various tents and thrown into the hole to create
the impression that no women and children were
murdered and cremated by the militiamen, but that

46 THE LUDLOW MASSACKE

all of those found were suffocated in caves dug for
their safety by their fathers and husbands.

President John McLennan of District 15, one
of the active leaders of the strike, went with the
Eed Cross party to Ludlow. He had been given
permission to go there, but as soon as he arrived
he was placed under arrest. He was released, but
had only been at liberty a few minutes when he
was again taken into custody and held until the
party was ready to leave.

The fact that the Eed Cross party and under-
takers were not allowed to search the ruins, and
that President McLennan was not even permitted
to go over the ground seems to further prove the
claim that only a small percentage of the murdered
were found and that the gunmen militia had even
more than that to hide from strike officials and the
public.

The bodies of the dead were taken to the Hall-
McMahon undertaking parlors in Trinidad.

And for the next forty-eight hours weeping and
wailing men and women crowded the place, hoping
against hope that they would find none of their loved
ones there, and yet seeming to wish that they would
rather have them dead than among the missing who
might never return from the scene of the slaughter.

Death Beats Life.

Death, represented by the Hamrock-Linderfelt
butchers, beat Life in the struggle, and young
strikers were the penalty. They were just some of
the many cases where the innocent had to suffer.

One particular instance of the results of this
butchery was had in the undertaking parlor that
night.

The young striker was unarmed.

Its mother lay on a cold, hard slab at the
morgue, a victim of the Hamrock-Linderfelt mur-
derers. She was found in the death hole at Ludlow

THE LUDLOW MASSACBE 47

when the Bed Cross Society visited the devastated
city.

If the murderous thugs in Colorado's national
guard uniform had remained away from Ludlow,
had not felt it necessary to massacre the innocents
to earn their $3 additional pay from the coal oper-
ators, there would have been at least one little
striker two days old. But the Hamrock-Linderfelt
assassins' lust for blood could not be denied.

Thursday morning when the woman was buried
a little heap lay in her arms against a breast that
never had or never would nurse it.

Trinidad turned out en masse to do honor to
the massacred dead when they were buried.

The wails and chants of the women who were
mourning their dead caused tears of sympathy to
flow from eyes that had formerly looked askance
at these same people.

As they passed the coffins of these poor dead
little children, charred and reddened by the fire,
their features distorted by the agony in which they,
died, the heart-cries of the mourners swelled into
a monster voice of protest against the terrible out-
rage.

Many of the women and children were in such
a horribly mutilated condition that the caskets were
closed.

There were none who watched this funeral pro-
cession who did not think of the words of the Eisen
God as He said: "For it is written vengeance is
"mine, I will repay saith the Lord."

Louis the Greek was buried in the Knights of
Pythias cemetery on Monday, one week after he
had made himself a martyr to the cause of his union
and his people, whom he rescued by the score.

To show the fellowship of the dead man for his
comrades at Ludlow, the body of Tikas, in a flower-
covered casket, had headed the funeral procession
of those who had been buried the Thursday before.

50 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

Then the body was returned to the undertaking par-
lors to await the arrival of a priest of the Greek
Catholic Church.

All day Sunday hundreds of strikers, hats in
hand, had marched past the bier of Tikas. They
solemnly touched the cold brow, crossed themselves,
muttered something and then quickened their steps
for the strikers' camp at San Eafael Heights.

Funeral of Louis Tikas.

Frances Wayne described Louis' funeral as
follows :

"The body of Tikas lay before an altar on
which were branched candles, holding high, burning
tapers. The priest, assisted by Pietro Catsulis,
now the leader of the Greek colony, intoned the
mass, the response being made by Catsulis.

"Three times the priest kissed the cheeks of
the dead leader. Three times he anointed the brow
with wine. Three times he sprinkled dust on the
face of the dead, while a Greek in overalls and cor-
duroy coat swung the silver censer and wailed dole-
fully.

." * Jesus give a place in Heaven to Louis,'
chanted the priest in the Greek tongue.

" l Jesus give a place in heaven to Louis. Bring
life from the grave,' solemnly repeated the dark-
faced fighting men who crowded the undertaker's
chapel.

" 'Jesus, if Louis has any enemies, may they
forget their hostility,' chanted Catsulis.

"The tapers burned low. The place was dim
with incense. But the priest chanted on, his iron-
gray hair and flowing beard in somber contrast with
his gold and silver woven robes.

"This was the funeral of the man beliked by
all he led and served. But a handful of women
were present, and no arms were carried to remind
those who watched that war was on.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 51

"Orderly, reverent, deeply religious, was the
service. When the body was carried from the
chapel, 488 Greeks followed the line before the
hearse. The American colors, draped in crepe, were
lifted, and in utter silence the cortege moved down
Main Street to Commercial, past the headquarters
of the United Mine Workers and on over the hill to
the Knights of Pythias cemetery.

"Before the funeral four Greeks carrying their
muskets entered the chapel. They lifted their hats,
muttered an oath to l avenge Louis' death, ' pounded
four times on the floor with their muskets, turned
and left the room."

The "Ludlow Massacre" started a two weeks'
war between strikers and gunmen that has probably
never been equalled for its viciousness in any indus-
trial conflict.

Attempt Wholesale Slaughter.

Driven frantic and more bloodthirsty by the
cries of protest that came from all parts of the world
against their infamous slaughter of the women and
children at Ludlow, the gunmen militia started what
they hoped would be the complete extermination of
the strikers and their families.

President McLennan was arrested Thursday by
the militia and held all night. Every few minutes
his life was threatened, but he was finally released.

While Eed Cross nurses waited in his office to
get permits to aid the injured at' Ludlow, Acting
Governor Fitzgarrald held an hour's conference with
the coal operators Tuesday afternoon. The result
of that conference was an order returning the militia
to the field the following day to reinforce the mur-
derers of Saloonkeeper Hamrock and Butcher Lin-
derfelt.

The Trinidad Free Press fixed the blame for
sending out the militia as follows :

"Orders to acting Governor Fitzgarrald to send

52 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

gunmen reinforcements to the strike zone to back
up the gunmen who massacred the women and chil-
dren at Ludlow Monday were carried direct from
the office of John C. Osgood, president of the Victor-
American Fuel Co., to the state capitol Wednesday
morning by President Stearns of the Chamber of
Commerce and Fred P. Johnson, political agent of
the Chicago packing trust.

"Assurances of ample funds for the campaign
were also taken to Fitzgarrald by those active agents
of Rockefellers and other special privilege interests.

"And Fitzgarrald lost no time in conveying the
coal operators' orders to Chase.

"Chase was delighted.

"He immediately began notifying Denver mili-
tiamen, whose mothers and wives were raging
against the Ludlow massacre, to hold themselves in
readiness to entrain for the strike zone.

"Fitzgarrald, alarmed at the protest of Demo-
cratic leaders over his refusal to go in person to
Ludlow and stop the fighting, feared that the fact
he was carrying out the Ammons policy of doing the
coal barons' bidding, gave out an interview Thurs-
day night saying he had refused the operators' offer
of money to finance the state troops.

"Stearns was ordered to come to Osgood 's office
in the E. & C. building. A few minutes later, John-
son arrived. Other visitors were swept aside. A
hurried conference followed.

1 i Then the orders were taken to Fitzgarrald. He
immediately told Chase to get in touch with his men.
Telegrams were sent to Governor Ammons, who was
en route home from Washington, where he had been
lobbying for land grabbers, who want further li-
cense to loot public lands in Colorado.

"Thus was Fitzgarrald lending his ear to the
coal barons and obeying their orders Wednesday,
while the Ludlow murderers were driving away un-
dertakers sent from Trinidad to Ludlow to recover

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 53

the burned and mangled forms of those little children
and brave women who died by fire and bullet.

Horror Shocks Colorado.

Colorado stood aghast at the horrors of the
shambles of Ludlow.

Persons who had been prostituted to favor the
militia before this catastrophe bowed their heads
and apologized that they were residents of a state
where its alleged citizen soldiery should be used to
murder the working class and its women and babes.

Men and women stood on the streets talking in
a whisper of this horror.

Organizations passed resolutions, some offering
armed assistance to the strikers and asking to be
called.

Many bodies turned over their entire treasuries
to aid the suffering men and women and children.

More than 1,000 women — many carrying babes
in their arms — stormed the capitol Saturday at the
call of the Women 's Peace organization and ordered
Governor Ammons to ask President Wilson to send
federal troops to end the civil war which flamed red
in the strike zone following the ' ' Slaughter of Inno-
cents " at Ludlow Monday by Eockefeller gunmen
wearing militia uniforms.

They sang " America " and other patriotic songs
while Ammons waited for detectives to escort him
into the presence of outraged maidens, wives and
mothers, who were so aroused over the massacre
of defenseless women and innocent children at Lud-
low.

Ammons tried to refuse their plea for an imme-
diate request for federal troops.

"Punish those guilty of the Ludlow massacre/'
was the battle cry as the women gathered.

"Wait until I investigate and get the facts,"
he pleaded. ' * It would be an AFFEONT TO PEES-

President John McLennan of District 15, U. M. W. A., and Major Pat Ham-
rock, saloon-keeper and officer in charge of Colorado's uniformed mur-
derers who perpetrated the Ludlow Massacre.

Picture taken when McLennan was a military prisoner.

THE LUDLOW MASSACKE 55

IDENT WILSON TO ASK FOE FEDERAL
TEOOPS NOW."

"May I respectfully ask in what way it would
be an affront to ask the president for help when he
has said he was willing to help if you will ask for
troops?" said Mrs. Eobert W. Steele, widow of Chief
Justice E. W. Steele, who led the delegation of men,
women and children.

Waiting hundreds cheered when the brave little
widow of the clear visioned late supreme court jus-
tice challenged the governor.

Ammons refused to answer this question. He
talked all around the point, but Colorado mothers
do not yet understand how it is an affront to demand
the stopping of civil war on women and children.

A thunderous cry for immediate action by the
governor in telegraphing to Washington for troops
forced him to promise the women that he would send
a message at once to find whether or not he could
have federal troops if he asked for them.

He was escorted to his office by the same com-
mittee of women which demanded his presence in
the house.

A telegram from Eepresentative Taylor of Colo-
rado had announced that federal troops could not be
sent even if asked for since there was no precedent
for such action by federal authorities.

Wilson was ready to send troops if Governor
Ammons would ask for them.

These conflicting statements caused the message
of inquiry to be sent.

Senator Helen Eing Eobinson, Mrs. S. K. Wall-
ing, Mrs. Evangeline Heartz, Mrs. J. J. Eyan and
Mrs. J. C. Herrlingger, carrying her eight-months-
old baby, camped in Governor Ammons ' office for an
hour before he would go to the house chamber to
get his answer from Washington.

Governor Ammons publicly promised the women

56 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

that he would find the guilty and PUNISH them for
the Ludlow massacre.

He said there had been constant firing in the
southern coal fields since 6 a. m. and he had been
trying to stop the battles between strikers and state
militia.

This is the telegram Ammons sent:

"To the President,
"White House,

"Washington, D. C.

' ' Conflicting reports as to action at cabinet meet-
ing yesterday morning have been received here. I
would be greatly obliged to know if we cannot con-
trol the situation in the southern coal fields, can we
have federal troops I

"ELIAS AMMONS."

After reading this message, to which no answer
had yet been received, the assembly was dismissed,
with a large delegation remaining to get the answer
when it is received.

The women were waiting in the house chamber
for the president's answer to Ammons' wire for
federal troops. The women did not leave for lunch.
When leaders suggested that a large committee be
named to relieve the meeting from the duty of wait-
ing, cries of "No, no," came from the audience.

Company Doctors Kill Babes.

During the speechmaking while the women
waited for Ammons to put in an appearance," an-
other kind of ' ' slaughter of innocents ' ' was described
by Mrs. Mary L. Geffs, 5025 Tennyson street, who
went personally into the southern coal fields to in-
vestigate conditions.

"And what of the coal company doctors," she
cried in a ringing voice.

THE LUDLOW MASSACBE 57

"Let me tell you how babes are killed by willful
neglect of camp doctors who pretended to care for
the women at confinement.

"I know personally of many babies born to
miners' wives who died through the carelessness of
a corporation-hired doctor to whom every mother
paid tribute of $1 a month. Oh, sisters, let me tell
you a coal miner's wife has just as much love for
her child as you have for yours.

' ' I believe they have even more devotion to their
babes than the rich, whom I have heard divide their
affection between their children and their poodle
dogs. Do you realize that this sort of child murder
has been going on for twenty-five years in our coal
camps ?

"When the camp doctor was refused by some
wives and another physician brought in to care for
them, he WAS CHASED OUT OF THE CAMP by
coal company guards.

"Women, hear me when I tell you these are
facts gathered by a woman who does not live in
southern Colorado, who is not a miner's wife and
who went there unbiased to learn the truth."

These women camped in the state house until
Ammons finally granted their demand and asked
President Wilson to send federal troops to Colorado.

The people of Colorado found one outlet for
their bitter feeling of protest against the slaughter
of the innocents in a monster mass meeting held on
the state house grounds in Denver Sunday afternoon,
April 26.

Prominent citizens of Denver got together and
issued the following call for the meeting:

58 THE LTJDLOW MASSACRE

Ludlow — A Call to Action

A mass meeting will be held Sunday afternoon
on the State House grounds at 3 o'clock to take ac-
tion upon the Ludlow massacre. All those to whom
patriotism means more than profits, and in whom
humanity still burns, are urged to attend and breathe
their passion into the dead body of murdered jus-
tice. Betrayed by those elected to protect, and
butchered by brutal mercenaries, the only hope of
the toiling class now lies in common counsel and
concerted action. Desperate is the need. The money
masters, realizing that we will not surrender as long
as life lasts, are resolved upon a campaign of utter
annihilation. Of all those who labor, whether in
mine, mill, shop or store, not one is safe from capi-
talism 's savage menace. It is the turn of the miners
today. Oh, brothers in other callings, it may be
yours tomorrow. It is not a handful of coal diggers
that have been marked down for slaughter ; it is the
right of the worker to better his condition that they
mean to destroy. If Ludlow shall go unanswered
it will be the death knell of human hope and human
aspiration. Let the blood of those martyred men,
women and babes wash away all lines of difference
and division, permitting brotherhood to stand forth
free again and whole. Come.

WORKERS' DEFENSE LEAGUE.

Ten thousand men and women stood in a driv-
ing rain for two hours that Sunday afternoon and
listened to stirring denunciations of the gunmen-
militiamen by Mother Jones, E. L. Doyle, secretary-
treasurer of District 15 of the United Mine Workers,
and others.

Resolutions of Meeting.

There in front of the state capitol, where Colo-
rado officials had betrayed its citizens, the following
resolutions were passed:

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 59

To All the People:

This meeting gathered under the open skies,
cries to the world the record of industrial wrongs
that found ghastly culmination in the wanton mas-
sacre of men, women and children under the burning
tents at Ludlow.

There are laws upon the statute books of Colo-
rado that guarantee to miners the eight-hour day,
cash payment for work, semi-monthly pay-days, the
right to unionization, check weighmen and the pro-
tection of safety devices.

Absentee landlords operating on land stolen
from the school children of Colorado, their human-
ity stifled by avarice, have defied every one of these
laws continuously and openly. More than 2,000 min-
ers have died like rats in traps these last twenty
years because dividends could not be lessened by the
expense of improvements, and their families denied
the right to collect damages have been doomed to
squalor and despair.

This cruel control has been obtained by the pur-
chase of state, county and municipal officials, seizure
of the election machinery, the peonage of employes,
the use of hired desperadoes and the constant threat
of the state militia, all to the end that justice has
been crushed and a sovereign state buried in shame
and disaster.

Eevolt has come at last. Twelve thousand
wretched men, speaking thirty-six different tongues,
have found common voice in a cry of despair that
shakes the world. It is to their relief that we dedi-
cate our lives and our liberties.

We demand the instant seizure of the coal mines
by the state pending an agreement between the op-
erators and the strikers.

We demand that the leases of 13,276 acres of
school land, for which the companies pay a beggarly
rental, be cancelled at once, and plans laid instantly

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 61

for development by the state of the 473,000 acres of
coal land owned by the state.

We demand a constitutional amendment repeal-
ing the infamous Moyer decision rendered by cor-
rupt judges to rob the humble and oppressed of their
most sacred constitutional guarantees.

We demand that our legislature repudiate the
$1,000,000 debt that the coal companies' use of the
militia has saddled upon the state, thereby forcing
capital to pay its own bills.

Governor a Traitor.

We brand Elias M. Ammons, governor, and
S. E. Fitzgarrald, lieutenant governor, as traitors
to the people and accessories to the murder of babies,
and we call upon the special session of the legisla-
ture to impeach them as false to their oaths and
their God, and if there be no special session, we
hereby pledge ourselves to institute recall proceed-
ings so that these servile tools of special privilege
may be deprived of their power to betray and op-
press.

And, lest it be thought that these are but hasty
determinations that will pass with the passion of the
moment, we call upon the justice-loving citizens of
Colorado to arm themselves so that if law and order
be still defied, we may be able to protect our homes,
our loved ones and our sacred rights.

Mutiny in Militia.

Six hundred men were ordered out by Czar
Chase. But the Ludlow massacre was even a stench
in the nostrils of some of the militiamen who had
previously terrorized the strike district by robberies
and outrages of women and children, and only about
350 state troopers went to the field.

With the aid of operators' machine guns and
state equipment, they left nothing undone to destroy

62 THE LUDLOW MASSACKE

the miners and their families. For six months they
had been in the field in an effort to break the strike
and had failed.

The Ludlow horror was planned and carried out
in the belief that this massacre of women and chil-
dren would certainly break the spirit of the striking
miners. But even this terrible holocaust would not
stop the miners from fighting for their rights.

So now came the state's militia back to the field
to attempt a complete physical extermination of the
strikers.

In every section of Las Animas, Huerfano and
Fremont counties Colorado's representative troop-
ers joined the murderous mine guards in attacks
upon the miners.

In Boulder county where the northern strike has
been fought for four years, the Baldwin-Feltz de-
tectives and mine guards started to do the work
alone.

Machine guns were turned .on the towns of La-
fayette and Louisville in an attempt to slaughter the
strikers and their families who make up the greater
part of the population of these towns.

Women and children were driven from their
homes to Denver, where they were taken care of at
hotels by the United Mine Workers. For five days
the militia and imported gunmen waged this war
upon the union coal miners.

Strikers Repel Murderers.

But Ludlow had taught the strikers a lesson.
They were prepared against a possible repetition of
the Ludlow horror. Citizens of the towns and ranch-
ers, where the trouble centered, turned over their
firearms and ammunition to the union men and they
were able to repel the attacks of Colorado's uni-
formed murderers.

Three union men were killed after the Ludlow
massacre, two at Aguilar and one at Walsenburg.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 63

The militia used every means of deception to
defeat the strikers and influence public opinion
against them.

At Walsenburg, Major P. P. Lester, a Red Cross
officer, went on the firing line when the fight started
on "the hogback."

He was killed while engaged in the fighting. But
the militia told a different story. They gave their
prostituted newspapers a sob story of how the strik-
ers had killed a Red Cross officer when he was min-
istering to the wounded.

The militia at first announced that only one of
their men had been killed in the fighting. Since that
time five more bodies have been found.

Probably the most vicious fighting after Ludlow
occurred at Forbes, almost two weeks later.

For months the militia and gunmen had been
attempting to "clean out" that colony. March 10,
when Neil Smith, a negro strikebreaker, got drunk
and was killed by a train, Czar Chase found an ex-
cuse for destroying the lower tent colony at Forbes.
He said that Smith had been murdered by the strik-
ers. He destroyed the miners' homes, threw them
out into a blinding snowstorm without food or shel-
ter, but he did not "clean out" the strikers.

The night before the federal troops came into
the strike zone the murderous mine guards decided
to make one last attempt to do this work. They at-
tacked the strikers. But the union men and their
families had long been expecting just such an attack,
and when the battle was over nine gunmen and scabs
were dead and part of the Forbes mine destroyed.

Chase Defends Thugs.

Since the Ludlow massacre, the state militia and
Adjutant General John Chase have done everything
in their power to discredit the strikers and to coun-
teract the revolting protest of the people of the

GOVERNOR ELIAS M. AMMONS, SPINELESS TOOL OF THE
COAL OPERATORS

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 65

United States against the murder of women and
children.

Chase himself has become an evangelist in the
interest of the "Law and Order League, " a body
boosted by prostituted sheets of the operators and
which stands for anything that will enable the corpo-
rations to own, body and soul, everything in the
state of Colorado, from its wonderful natural re-
sources down to the ignorant men of foreign nations
whom they may import to dig wealth for them.

Former Judge Advocate Major E. J. Boughton,
notorious tool of the Cripple Creek operators, has
been sent east by Chase, or Cheese, as you will, to
tell the people that no women and children were
killed at Ludlow.

Following the report of the military committee
on its findings in the Ludlow affair, a court martial
has been held, a real dignified court martial, the
members of which have for years taken the cham-
pionship of the whitewash league.

Every truth long since established by the coal
miners and representative citizens has been denied
by the imported assassins of the operators, or, let
us say, the Colorado National Guard.

Newspapers of the state began to talk of the
"whitewash/' so the military court martial decided
that there must be a "goat." Lieut. (Butcher) K. E.
Linderfelt was selected. He testified that he struck
Louis Tikas on the head and broke the stock of his
gun. But he said Louis had cursed him for murder-
ing the women and children. Knowing the person-
nel of the court martial, citizens of Colorado expect
that Linderfelt will probably be punished "severely"
by the militia for the murder of Tikas. As a matter
of fact, these citizens believe that the court martial
officials, of operators' tools, as you wish, will decide
that in the murder of Louis Tikas, Linderfelt was
guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and may cen-
sure him severely.

66 THE LUDLOW MASSACKE

Since the federal troops arrived there has been
no disturbance, except during the last week in May,
when several gunmen attacked the United States
troops.

The coal barons went at once to the officers and
blamed it on the strikers.

It was just another example of the hysterical,
malicious efforts of the operators to discredit the
strikers.

The operators said it was evident that strikers
fired the shots since they came from their tent col-
ony. To one not acquainted with methods of the coal
barons this would seem reasonable. But the people
of Colorado remember the dynamite which the strik-
ers were supposed to have planted and exploded at
Sopris to terrorize the neighborhood. For months
the union men were charged with these acts of law-
lessness.

And then came the congressional investigation.
The coal barons called Tony Langowski to prove that
the strikers were responsible. Tony told of how the
operators had paid him $3 a day to join the union
as a spotter. He said he had become secretary of
the Sopris local and received $3 a week from the
union.

Spotters Terrorize Towns.

But he did not tell the story the operators put
him on the stand to tell. He said that all of fhese
dynamite explosions had been deliberately planned
and carried out by the spotters of the operators in
the union to throw discredit on the real striking coal
miners.

If the shots did come from the strikers' colony,
citizens of Colorado are convinced that they were
fired by another Tony Langowski in the pay of the
coal operators.

As long as the coal mines where the trouble
centers are allowed to run with imported scabs and

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 67

gunmen, there is certain to be bloodshed unless the
federal troops are kept in the field.

That Ainmons has not completed his work for
the coal operators and still hopes to serve them by
trying again to break the strike with the state militia
was shown by the special session of the state legis-
lature.

The legislators were called together by Ammons
to provide means of paying the $700,000 military
debt contracted by him and his lickspittle partner of
the coal operators, John Chase, in their attempt to
break the strike.

A saloonkeeper and gambler and notorious tool
of the operators was elected speaker of the house,
and when the legislature adjourned its members had
passed a $1,000,000 appropriation bill, providing
$300,000 to send the militia back into the strike dis-
trict to carry on their work of intimidation and ter-
ror if the federal troops are withdrawn.

The people of Colorado know what this state
militia did before the Ludlow massacre.

They know how they attempted to slaughter
women with babes in their arms' on the streets of
Trinidad January 22, 1914; they know how they
robbed and plundered and destroyed homes; they
know how they insulted and abused and outraged
women ; they know how they denied men and women
their constitutional rights, filled jails with innocent
strikers and held them incommunicado as military
prisoners and committed countless other outrages
in their effort to break the spirit of the strikers.

They know that if the federal troops are re-
moved and the militia returned to the field, the state
troopers will carry on their work of carnage in a
vain effort to break the strike.

As long as the federal troops remain in the field,
peace will continue as far as the strikers are con-
cerned.

>,>v

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

69

Only the future can tell what is to be the fate
of the Colorado strikers and their wives and chil-
dren.

The Ludlow massacre and the Colorado situa-
tion as it stands today is a gruesome prophecy to
labor men of the world.

They need but realize that the Colorado coal
miners have suffered all of the outrages mentioned
in this book and many more in a fight to secure an
enforcement of the laws of the state of Colorado, to
realize what may be their fate in the future.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 71

Causes of the Strike

The bloody massacre of twenty-one men, women
and children at Ludlow, Colo., April 20, 1914, was
the final effort of the coal operators and John D.
Rockefeller to wipe out every vestige of the labor
movement in Colorado and to give warning to any
who might demand their constitutional rights that
theirs would be a similar fate.

For more than thirty years the coal miners of
Colorado have been only so many slaves of the
operators. Every industrial, political and religious
right has been denied them. Legislation in the in-
terests of the workers has availed them nothing, for
the coal companies have owned the courts.

As early as 1884 the miners banded themselves
together in an effort to get those rights granted
them by the constitution of the United States and
the statutes of Colorado. Each time, however, by
murdering them, by burning their homes, by deport-
ing them, and other high-handed methods the oper-
ators were able to break the strike.

In 1904 the miners made their most valiant
effort to break their bondage. For months and
months they fought, suffered untold privations,
only in the end to be deported from Colorado like
so many cattle in box cars.

Immediately after that strike was called off,
6,000 men who had belonged to the union were
blacklisted. Some of the mine owners opposed this
policy, but were forced to carry it out through the
absolute domination of the state by Eockefeller and
the larger corporations. If they refused to obey the
mandates of the triumvirate, certain ruin was the
result. Sometimes their credit was stopped at the
banks. At other times the Eockefeller gang would
go into their market and undersell them as much as
one dollar a ton. Other methods were used and
always successfully, with the result that no matter

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 73

how a man might feel toward his men he must sub-
mit to the tyrannies of the larger companies.

The oppressions of the men which led up to the
present strike are so foreign to American liberty
that they are almost unbelievable to the man who
believes that constitutional government does exist
everywhere in this supposed land of the free. But
men who have suffered them for years have abso-
lutely established them as facts before the congres-
sional committee which recently investigated the
Colorado strike, and they must be believed.

Operators Break Laws.

One of the many laws passed in the interests
of the miners is that providing for a checkweigh-
man. This has been a statute for a decade, but the
miners have never been allowed a checkweighman.
Here and there men robbed of 700 to 1,400 pounds
of coal on every car they mined would get together
and demand their state right to have a checkweigh-
man. They were discharged at once.

The abolition of the scrip system, the granting
of the right to trade wherever . they pleased, to be-
long to a union, and the establishing of a semi-
monthly pay-day, are other laws and rights passed
by the Colorado legislature, but which the operators
have always denied the men.

The miners of Colorado have never been allowed
their political rights. On election day they were
driven like so many sheep to the polls. The super-
intendent sent one man in to vote. He marked a
ballot, but instead of placing it in the box took it to
the superintendent. This was given to a man to
place in the ballot box, and he in turn brought out
a ballot marked in the same way. Thus the endless
chain was continued. Any man who refused to vote
was discharged and driven out of the county. At
times when even this method would not win an elec-
tion, some prominent man was arrested. His

74 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

friends were told that he would be " fixed" if they
did not make his followers vote the way of the coal
operators.

If the coal operators wanted to "get" anyone
and they did get everyone suspected of even being
a union sympathizer, the sheriff in either Las Ani-
mas* or Huerf ano counties did the work. Men were
arrested on trumped-up charges and tried by fixed
juries. An example of the rotten conditions in
Huerf ano County was given the congressional in-
vestigating committee. Louis Miller, a notorious
thug and deputy sheriff, assaulted a union man,
breaking his jaw. The miner had Miller arrested.
He was tried and acquitted by a jury, seven of
whom were likewise deputy sheriffs.

Lawson Persecuted.

The case of John B. Lawson, international board
member of the United Mine Workers of America,
shows how rotten is the government in the strike
district and how they "get" union men whether
there is anything against them or not.

In 1906, Lawson went into Huerfano county to
organize the miners. The operators spotted him at
once and ordered the sheriff to "get" Lawson.

But the labor leader broke no laws. The coal
barons finally became frantic to think that there was
a union man at large in their midst informing the
men of their constitutional rights, and ordered the
sheriff to "get" Lawson or get out himself.

So, one night Lawson left Walsenburg to visit
a nearby mining camp. Two thugs of the sheriff
followed him. When Lawson reached the edge of
the town, one of the thugs stepped up to him. An-
other put a six-shooter in the union man's pocket
and the first "police" officer arrested Lawson for
carrying concealed deadly weapons.

The union organizer was placed in jail and held
there.

THE LTTDLOW MASSACRE 75

Strikebreakers brought in from every section
of Europe and Japan to take the places of the
blacklisted and deported miners of the 1904 strike
soon began to realize that Huerfano and Las Animas
counties, Colorado, were not a part of the United
States — that constitutional government did not exist
there. They, too, began to clamor for their rights.
They received their discharge and were sent "down
the canyon/'

They realized that only by organization could
they hope to obtain their constitutional rights and
they began petitioning the United Mine Workers of
America to organize them. Finally in 1911 organ-
izers were sent into the district, only to be beaten
up and driven out.

11,232 Men Strike.

Conditions finally became so unbearable that
the miners sent delegates to a convention at Trin-
idad, Colorado, September 16, 1913. They de-
manded to strike at once, but cooler heads of the
Mine Workers insisted that they give the operators
a week in which to meet with them and discuss their
grievances. The coal barons refused to meet their
men, and September 23, 1913, 11,232 men left their
work in a fight to a finish to get the seven demands
drawn up at the Trinidad convention. All of these
with the exception of a slight increase in wages are
granted by the laws of the state.

When the operators saw a strike was inevitable
the Baldwin Feltz detective agency was employed,
and hundreds of gunmen and hired assassins, many
of whom had murdered women and children in the
West Virginia strike, were brought into the state.
More than a dozen machine guns were purchased
and a systematic reign of terror that has known no
equal in the history of industrial conflicts was begun
by these hired murderers of John D. Rockefeller.
Gerald Lippiatt was the first to pay the death pen-

ORDERS

THE LUDLOW MASSACBE 77

alty. He was murdered in the streets of Trinidad
August 16, 1913.

One of the most dastardly death-dealing de-
vices employed by the coal barons to harrass, intim-
idate and murder the strikers was a high-powered
automobile covered with armor plate and mounted
with a machine gun and six thugs with high-powered
rifles.

Death Special at Work.

During the day this " Death Special " was
driven at top speed through the strike zone, shoot-
ing into the tent colonies. One of the most ne-
farious acts of these hired murderers of industry
was the attack on the Forbes tent colony of peaceful
strikers. On the afternoon of October 17 the
strikers were aroused from the quiet monotony of
their existence by 'the approach of an automobile.
They crowded to the entrance to the colony to meet
a man who came toward them bearing a white flag.
The leader of the strikers went to greet him. The
gunman exhibited a union card and asked the men
whether they too belonged to the union. They said
they did. "Well, if you do, you'd better look out,"
said he. The gunman dropped the flag and the
shooting began. A whistling reign of bullets scat-
tered the men and women to every possible place of
safety. But the bullets were faster than humans.
One man was killed and a young boy received nine
bullet wounds in the leg while he was trying to crawl
into his tent.

In these tented cities of the strikers were hun-
dreds of mothers with babes at their breasts, men,
women and children braving the elements, the hard-
ships of life, but happy in the belief that the dawn
of a happier civilization was at hand. When the
children went to play in the day, mothers and
fathers never knew whether their homes would be
destroyed before their return nor whether the happy

78 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

little future citizens of the United States would
meet the terrible fate suffered by the residents of
Ludlow at the hands of the gunmen.

And if the day did pass without slaughter, the
night was spent in equal terror of these imported
assassins. On every point of vantage surrounding
the tent colonies the; operators placed searchlights.
The panic among the strikers and their families
which they had kept up during the day was con-
tinued at night by the searchlight. These powerful
machines were played on the tent colonies from
dusk to dawn, making it impossible for the strikers
to sleep and keeping them in constant fear of an
attack by machine guns and high-powered rifles,
which might come at any moment from the gunmen
who make their living by murdering and terrorizing
their brothers and sisters.

In October the operators, who own Huerfano
County, placed some of their thugs with a machine
gun in Walsenburg. It was turned loose on the
unarmed and peaceful strikers who lined the street.
When the smoke cleared away four members of the
United Mine Workers had paid the penalty of fight-
ing for their constitutional rights in Colorado.

Gunmen Murder Eleven.

When the state militia was called out October
27, 1913, eleven striking coal miners had been killed
by these murderers of John D. Eockefeller and his
subordinates, the Colorado coal operators.

But if the gunmen were murderers, if they were
robbers, if they were abusers of women, they were
better than the Colorado National Guard, under the
command of John Chase, who, drunk with the flat-
tery of his bosses, the operators, and intoxicated
with an ill-founded idea of his own importance,
stopped at nothing in his effort to break the strike
of the coal miners.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 79

It is impossible to tell in a few lines of the
atrocities of the so-called militiamen, many of whom
were recruited from the civic cesspools of the world
and the Baldwin Feltz hired assassins.

Constitutional government was absolutely set
aside by the state militia. The case of Mother Jones,
82-year-old angel of the coal camps, illustrates the
truth of this statement.

When the strike started, Mother Jones was on
the scene doing all in her power to help the women
and children. During this time she did much to keep
the men of the strike colonies orderly and law-abid-
ing.

When the militia went into the field and started
its reign of terror, Mother Jones denounced their
actions in no uncertain terms. During the latter
part of December she stopped in Trinidad on her
way from El Paso to Denver. She was deported at
once by the militia.

For months Elias M. Ammons, lickspittle of the
coal operators and cattle-puncher, but bearing the
title of governor of Colorado, had threatened to ar-
rest Mother Jones if she attempted to enter the
strike zone.

Mother Jones in Bull Pen.

Determined that she would exercise her consti-
tutional right to go where and when she pleased,
Mother Jones eluded three "thugs who were spotting
her and went to Trinidad, Sunday evening, January
llth.

One hundred and fifty militiamen stormed the
Toltec hotel shortly before noon the next day and
succeeded in making her a military prisoner. She
was taken to San Rafael hospital, which was turned
into a military bastile, and held incommunicado for
nine weeks.

Through the United Mine Workers' attorney,
Horace N. Hawkins, she applied to the state supreme

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THE L u D L o w MASSACRE 8.1

court for a writ of habeas corpus. Before the court
could hand down a decision, the militiamen went to
her with the announcement that Governor Ammons
desired to talk to her. When she reached Denver the
militia gave out the statement that she had asked to
come to Denver and that she was no longer a pris-
oner, thus forestalling a possible reversal of the
notorious Moyer decision.

A week later she returned to the strike zone and
this time was kidnapped from the train at Walsen-
burg and thrown into a vermin-ridden cellar cell in
the Huerfano county jail.

Finally the supreme court issued the writ of
habeas corpus, ordering the militia to show cause
why she should not be liberated. But the militia
again prevented a reversal of the Moyer decision by
releasing her before the date of hearing set by the
supreme court.

The Colorado militia went wild in their efforts
to break the strike. They interfered with the United
States mail, with United States officials, and pre-
vented state officers from carrying out their regular
work of inspecting the mines.

One of the many instances of the latter was had
when State Factory Inspectors Eli Gross, Frank
Mancini and George Howe went to Delagua and Has-
tings to learn whether the m.en were being held in
the mines against their will.

When company and militia officers learned that
Mancini, who is editor of an Italian paper favorable
to the miners, was in the party, they refused them
admittance to the mine.

To add to this outrage, Major Hamrock, saloon-
keeper, officer of .the militia and later in charge of
the Ludlow murderers of women, children and un-
born babes, tried to make political capital out of the
incident by deliberately lying when he said that Man-
cini had told him he had orders from Deputy Labor

82 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

Commissioner E. V. Brake to get the men out of the
mines.

Homes Plundered.

Homes were broken into on the pretense that
these militiamen were searching for arms. They
had no search warrants. The authority of Rocke-
feller's approval, or the state of Colorado, as you
please, was sufficient warrant for their plundering
expeditions, and they stole everything of value.

One of the most pitiful stories told the con-
gressional investigating committee was that of a
little son of Mrs. Yankinski. She had gone to town,
leaving her four little children alone in the house.
Along came a militiaman and his captain, the latter
lying on the seat in a drunken stupor. The militia-
man entered and began a search. He finally found
$200 sewed in the hem of an old coat. The little
boy was prostrated when he saw the "soldier" was
going to take the money and was rewarded with a
punch on the jaw. When he fell from the blow the
gunman-militiaman kicked him in the face. A
younger sister began to cry when she saw that her
brother had been hurt, and she too was knocked
down. The robber kicked her in the face, breaking
her nose. The incident happened several days be-
fore the congressional investigating committee ar-
rived in the strike zone, but the child's nose was
so seriously fractured that she was unable to testify
before the congressman.

Over in Segundo a woman was taking one of
her children to visit relatives. A drunken militia-
man took the child from her, made the tot line up
with other 'children, and then forced the procession
of children to march about the city for two hours
while he jabbed them now and then with a bayonet
to make them realize that they were marching on the
orders of one of the "peace-preservers" of the cap-
italistic-ridden state of Colorado.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 83

Women Outraged.

Someone fired a shot at Aguilar one night. Two
militiamen saw several women come out of a back
gate. They grabbed them and dragged both through
a snow-covered alley to the jail. Oiie of these
women was to become a mother in a few hours.
She fainted, but that did not prevent the scab-herd-
ing militia of the state of Colorado from putting her
through the notorious third degree. When a doctor
informed the "arm of Colorado law" that the
mother might at any moment give birth to the child,
the woman was released and allowed to go to her
home. It was later proved that the shots were fired
by some of the gunmen militiamen in an attempt
to start a battle and murder the strikers and their
wives and children.

Saloonkeepers were also favorite subjects of
torture for the militiamen. In Segundo on6 night
four militiamen went to the door of a saloon after
twelve o 'clock at night. They demanded admittance
and were refused. Guns belonging to the state of
Colorado, or Rockefeller, were put into use, the door
battered in, the saloonkeeper knocked unconscious.
After becoming intoxicated, they left the uncon-
scious saloonkeeper on the floor, and carried out all
the liquor their arms would hold. Other saloons
were robbed and the proprietors beaten up, but no
action against them has ever been brought by the
state.

Mothers and Babes Maimed.

One of the most notorious outrages of the mili-
tary rule in the strike district occurred January 22.
Mother Jones had been placed in a military bastile
because she insisted that as an American citizen she
had a right to come and go where and when she
pleased. The women of Trinidad and the strike
zone decided to hold a protest parade. They went
to Adjutant General Chase. He approved their

MILITARISM

The above picture shows Mother Jones, 82-year-old angel of the coal
camps, confined in a damp, filthy, cold, cellar cell in the Walsenburg,
Colo., jail. She was kidnaped, taken from a train while on her way to
Trinidad, and placed in this cell to be held incommunicado as a military
prisoner. Her announcement that she intended to exercise her consti-
tutional right as an American citizen to go where and when she pleased
was the only reason given by the $700,000 militia for this outrage. This
same cell is so uninhabitable that it caused the death of a healthy young
Greek, who contracted rheumatism of the heart.

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 85

line of inarch and the parade was held. Down the
street they went, little children trotting beside their
mothers carrying babes at their breast. Nothing
could have been more orderly. Suddenly down the
street rushed the mounted troopers of the state of
Colorado with sabers drawn. At their head was
Chase. Women and children were trampled under
the hoofs of the horses, mothers were slashed with
sabers, more than a dozen of them being mutilated.

But if this was a horrible outrage, it did not
equal the bloodthirsty actions of this inhuman
despot, Chase. Sarah Slator, a 16-year-old girl, was
returning from school. When she saw the attempted
wholesale massacre of women and children she
stopped to see the trouble. Chase, a man clothed
with the full military authority of the state of Colo-
rado, rode up and ordered her to move on. Her
feet could not move fast enough to please the blood-
thirsty military tool of the coal operators, and the
general of the militia of the state of Colorado
kicked this little innocent school girl in the breast
so savagely that she may never be able to nurse a
babe.

Nothing was left undone by the militiamen to
prove that they were no more than the employes of
the coal operators. For months they threatened to
" clean out the tent colonies and every d— - rough
red-neck in them." They could find no excuse. One
night a negro strikebreaker got drunk and went to
sleep on a railroad track near Suffield. He was run
over and killed by an approaching train. Foxhounds
were placed on the trial of the " murderer. " They
went the opposite direction from the Forbes tent
colony. No proof -could be fastened on strikers by
going this way, so the militia thugs led the hounds
into the Forbes tent colony. The news was flashed
to the world that bloodhounds had tracked the
" murderer " to the Forbes colony. The Colorado-
clothed fiends demolished the tent colony, throwing

86 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

the men, women and children out into a blinding
snowstorm, with the nearest place of shelter several
miles away. Sixteen of the strikers were arrested
for the murder of the drunken strikebreaker who
was killed by a train.

Miners Held Incommunicado.

One of the favorite methods used by the militia
in their attempt to break the strike was to arrest
union officials and strikers by the wholesale without
warrant or charge and hold them incommunicado.
In jail they were subjected to untold torture and
threatened with all kinds of violent deaths unless
they implicated high officials of the United Mine
Workers in some crime. For five and six nights at
a time these poor strikers were kept awake by bay-
onet jabs and dashes of cold water.

It was these and hundreds of other tyrannies
and outrages practised on the men, women and chil-
dren of the strike zone that led up to the horrible
massacre of innocents at Ludlow, April 20.

The militia, after incurring a debt of $1,000,000
on the state to aid the coal operators, had been
withdrawn the Thursday before. They had no
sooner been taken from the field than all the hired
murderers of the coal operators in that district
were recruited into the militia. These assassins
were stationed at Ludlow under command of Major
Pat Hamrock and Lieutenant Karl E. Linderfelt,
who for months had threatened to clean out all the
tent colonies and "murder every d— - one of those
red-necks. "

The cause of the entire trouble in Colorado was
summarized by Judge Ben B. Lindsey of Denver
when he testified before the Committee on Industrial
Relations in New York City.

He said: "Colorado has perfected the science
of corrupting men. Its judges, its supreme court

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

87

judge, are owned like the office boy; its business
men, its lawyers, are all owned.

" Capitalists in Colorado have carried out most
perfidious deals to control the agencies of the laws,
and not only make laws, but prevent the enforcement
of laws."

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JUSTICE IN COLORADO

THE LUDLOW MASSACRE 89

The Massacre of the Innocents

(The Eocky Mountain News)

(Note — The following editorial appeared in the
News April 22, 1914, two days after the Ludlow hor-
ror. Prior to that time the News had favored the
operators.)

The horror of the shambles at Ludlow is over-
whelming. Not since the days when pitiless red men
wreaked vengeance upon intruding frontiersmen and
upon their women and children has this western
country been stained with so foul a deed.

The details of the massacre are horrible. Mex-
ico offers no barbarity so base as that of the murder
of defenseless women and children by the mine
guards in soldiers' clothing. Like whitened sepul-
chres we boast of American civilization with this
infamous thing at our very doors. Hucrta murdered
Madero, but even Huerta did not shoot an innocent
little boy seeking water for his mother who lay ill.
Villa is a barbarian, but in his maddest excess Villa
has not turned machine guns on imprisoned women
and children. Where is the outlaw so far beyond
the pale of human kind as to burn the tent over the
heads of nursing mothers and helpless little babies f

Out of this infamy one fact stands clear. Ma-
chine guns did the murder. The machine guns were
in the hands of mine guards, most of whom were
also members of the militia. It was a private war,
with the wealth of the richest man in the world be-
hind the mine guards.

Once and for all time the right to employ armed
guards must be taken away from private individuals
and corporations. To the state, and to the state
alone, belongs the right to maintain peace. Any-
thing else is anarchy. Private warfare is the only
sort of anarchy the world has ever known, and armed
forces employed by private interests have introduced

90 THE LUDLOW MASSACRE

the only private wars of modern times. This prac-
tice must be stopped. If the state laws are not
strong enough, then the federal government must
step in. At any cost, private warfare must be de-
stroyed.

Who are these mine guards to whom is entrusted
the sovereign right to massacre? Four of the fra-
ternity were electrocuted recently in New York. They
are the gunmen of the great cities, the offscourings
of humanity, whom a bitter heritage has made the
wastrels of the world. Warped by the wrongs of
their own upbringing, they know no justice and they
care not for mercy. They are hardly human in in-
telligence, and not as high in the scale of kindness
as domestic animals.

Yet they are not the guilty ones. The blood of
the innocent women and children rests on the hands
of those who for the greed of dollars employed such
men and bought such machines of murder. The
world has not been hard upon these ; theirs has been
a gentle upbringing. Yet they reck not of human
life when pecuniary interests are involved.

The blood of the women and children, burned
and shot like rats, cries aloud from the ground. The
great state of Colorado has failed them. It has be-
trayed them. Her militia, which should have been
the impartial protectors of the peace have acted as
murderous gunmen. The machine guns which played
in the darkness upon the homes of humble men and
women, whose only crime was an effort to earn an
honest living, were bought and paid for by agents
of the mine owners. Explosive bullets have been
used on children. Does the bloodiest page in the
French revolution approach this in hideousness?

In the name of humanity, in the name of civili-
zation, we have appealed to President Wilson. His
ear heard the wail of the innocent, outraged and
dying in Mexico. Cannot the president give heed to
the sufferings of his own people?

THE L u D L o w MASSACRE

91

Think, Mr. President, of the captain of the strik-
ers, Louis Tikas, whose truce with the gunmen was
ended with his murder. Think of the fifty-one shots
which were passed through the strike leader. Think
of his body, which has lain exposed since his in-
famous killing. Then, with that vast power which
has been committed to you as the executive of a great
nation, attend to the misery wrought by an anarch-
istic lust for dollars. Without your speedy aid
the poor and the needy, betrayed by the state, may
be slaughtered to the last smiling babe.

THE "DEATH SPECIAL" OF THE COLORADO COAL OPERATORS

The armored automobile, equipped with a machine gun and manned by
six Baldwin-Feltz murderers, who murdered and intimidated the strikers
during the early part of the strike.

\